Category Archives: US Politics

Trump signs executive order to lift some financial sanctions on Syria

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White House says move will help stabilise country after ousting of Assad and could lead to broader sanctions relief

Donald Trump has signed an executive order to lift some financial sanctions on Syria in a move that the White House says will help stabilise the country after the ousting of Bashar al-Assad.

The order was designed to “terminate the United States’ sanctions programme on Syria”, a White House spokesperson said, cancelling a 2004 declaration that froze Syrian government property and limited exports to Syria over Damascus’s chemical weapons programme.

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Iran’s nuclear enrichment ‘will never stop’, nation’s UN ambassador says

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Amir-Saeid Iravani says Tehran is ready for negotiations but Trump’s ‘unconditional surrender is not negotiation’

Amir-Saeid Iravani, Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations, said on Sunday that the Islamic republic’s nuclear enrichment “will never stop” because it is permitted for “peaceful energy” purposes under the treaty on the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons.

“The enrichment is our right, an inalienable right, and we want to implement this right,” Iravani told CBS News, adding that Iran was ready for negotiations but “unconditional surrender is not negotiation. It is dictating the policy toward us.”

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Trump sent ‘explicit’ threat to cut funds from University of Virginia, senator says

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Mark Warner says school would face slashes to jobs and financial aid if its president did not resign over DEI practices

The University of Virginia (UVA) received “explicit” notification from the Trump administration that the school would endure cuts to university jobs, research funding and student aid as well as visas if the institution’s president, Jim Ryan, did not resign, according to a US senator.

During an interview Sunday on CBS’s Face the Nation, Mark Warner, a Democratic senator for Virginia, defended Ryan – who had championed diversity policies that the president opposes – and predicted that Donald Trump will similarly target other universities.

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Trump considers forcing journalists to reveal sources who leaked Iran report

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President dismisses leaked assessment suggesting strikes only temporarily disrupted Iran’s nuclear development

Donald Trump said he is weighing forcing journalists who published leaked details from a US intelligence report assessing the impact of the recent American military strikes on Iran to reveal their sources – and the president also claimed his administration may prosecute those reporters and sources if they don’t comply.

In an interview Sunday with Fox News host Maria Bartiromo, Trump doubled down on his claim that the 21 June airstrikes aimed at certain Iranian facilities successfully crippled Iran’s nuclear program. He insisted the attacks destroyed key enriched uranium stockpiles, despite Iranian assertions that the material had been relocated before the strikes.

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Joe Biden and Kamala Harris attend funeral of slain Minnesota lawmaker

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Governor Tim Walz eulogizes Melissa Hortman, killed with husband, as ‘most consequential speaker’ in state’s history

Democratic former Minnesota state house speaker Melissa Hortman was honored for her legislative accomplishments and her humanity during a funeral on Saturday that was attended by Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.

The former president and vice-president were joined by more than 1,000 other mourners.

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California legislature acts to keep film and TV production at home

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Legislation will more than double current tax incentives under larger bill slated to be signed by Gavin Newsom

Hollywood’s home state of California will more than double annual tax incentives for film and television production to $750m under a measure passed by the Democratic-led legislature on Friday.

The increase from the current $330m was approved as part of a broader tax bill that is expected to be signed into law by California’s governor, Gavin Newsom.

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Trump makes case for ‘big, beautiful bill’ and cranks up pressure on Republicans

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President calls for passage of signature tax bill but it’s not yet clear whether Senate Republicans have sufficient votes

Donald Trump convened congressional leaders and cabinet secretaries at the White House on Thursday to make the case for passage of his marquee tax-and-spending bill, but it remains to be seen whether his pep talk will resolve a developing logjam that could threaten its passage through the Senate.

The president’s intervention comes as the Senate majority leader, John Thune, mulls an initial vote on Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” on Friday, before a 4 July deadline Trump has imposed to have the legislation ready for his signature.

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Bill Moyers, Lyndon Johnson press chief and celebrated broadcaster, dies at 91

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Moyers, who served as Johnson’s press secretary for two years, became one of television’s most revered journalists

Bill Moyers, the former White House press secretary who became one of television’s most honored journalists, masterfully using a visual medium to illuminate a world of ideas, died on Thursday at age 91.

Moyers died in a New York City hospital, according to longtime friend Tom Johnson, the former chief executive of CNN and an assistant to Moyers during Lyndon B Johnson’s administration.

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Supreme court paves way for South Carolina and other states to defund Planned Parenthood

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Decision could embolden red states in US to block clinics that provide abortions from receiving Medicaid funds

The US supreme court has paved the way for South Carolina to kick Planned Parenthood out of its Medicaid program over its status as an abortion provider, a decision that could embolden red states across the country to effectively “defund” the reproductive healthcare organization.

The case, Medina v Planned Parenthood South Atlantic, centers around a 2018 executive order from South Carolina’s governor, Henry McMaster, that blocked clinics that provide abortions from receiving Medicaid reimbursements. “Payment of taxpayer funds to abortion clinics, for any purpose, results in the subsidy of abortion and the denial of the right to life,” McMaster said at the time, even though the reimbursements could not be used for abortions. Abortions are also now banned in South Carolina after six weeks of pregnancy.

More details soon…

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Ro Khanna calls on Democrats to reclaim identity as ‘the anti-war party’

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‘We should be the party of peace abroad, good jobs at home. Donald Trump took that from us,’ says congressman

In the days since Donald Trump authorized strikes on Iranian nuclear sites, and then forged a shaky ceasefire agreement, Congressman Ro Khanna has called on Democrats to reclaim a political identity he says they lost: being the party of peace.

“Now is the time for the Democratic party to be the anti-war party – the party against wars of choice,” Khanna said in an interview. “We should be the party of peace abroad, good jobs at home. Donald Trump took that from us in 2016 and 2024 and my leadership this past week has been trying to reclaim the anti-war mantle.”

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Mamdani says leftwing populist victory can be replicated across US

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Democratic socialist tells MSNBC his campaign against Cuomo shows leftist politics can thrive beyond New York

Zohran Mamdani, in his first major interview since his upset victory in the Democratic party’s mayoral primary in New York shook up US politics, said his brand of campaigning and leftist political stances can translate to anywhere in the US.

Mamdani, a Democratic socialist, stunned many observers by beating Andrew Cuomo on Tuesday night, delivering a devastating blow to the former New York governor who ran a centrist campaign backed by most of the party establishment.

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Usha Vance: husband’s pick as Trump running mate came ‘like a bolt of lightning’

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Second lady says on Meghan McCain podcast she is ‘not plotting next steps’ and is just ‘along for the ride’

Usha Vance learned her husband, JD, had been selected to be Donald Trump’s running mate “maybe five minutes” before the news was made public – and just about an hour before he was formally nominated.

“It really was like a bolt of lightning,” Vance said during an interview on Meghan McCain’s podcast, Citizen McCain. Nearly a year later, seated in the Naval Observatory, Vance reflected on how radically her life has changed – “people call you ma’am. No one’s ever called me ma’am before this.”

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Trump DoJ ally denies claim he urged defying court orders on immigration

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Emil Bove, a former Trump attorney, faced Senate judiciary committee considering him to be federal appeals judge

Emil Bove, a top justice department official and former defense attorney for Donald Trump, denied to senators on Wednesday a whistleblower’s claim that he suggested prosecutors ignore orders from judges who ruled against the president’s immigration policy.

In a hearing before the Senate judiciary committee to consider his nomination to serve as a federal appeals court judge, Bove, currently the principal associate deputy attorney general at the justice department, also rejected assertions from Democrats that corruption charges against New York City mayor Eric Adams were dropped in order to secure his cooperation with the president’s immigration enforcement agenda.

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Mamdani’s defeat of Cuomo offers Democrats a path out of the wilderness

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Mamdani signifies a generational change and rebuke to a party establishment grown complacent and hypocritical

The party was on its knees. It failed to beat Donald Trump, a twice impeached convicted felon, and lost both chambers of Congress. Since November, Democrats have been searching for a path out of the wilderness. On Tuesday, they found one.

But instead of celebrating Zohran Mamdani’s apparent victory in the New York mayoral primary election, the first major Democratic contest since Trump’s win, many in the party establishment went into panic mode.

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Doge employee ‘Big Balls’ has resigned, says White House official

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One of Doge’s best-known workers Edward Coristine, 19, quits a month after his former boss Elon Musk’s departure

One of the US so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge) service’s best-known employees, 19-year-old Edward Coristine, has resigned from the US government, a White House official said on Tuesday, a month after the acrimonious departure of his former boss Elon Musk.

The White House official gave no further details on the move and Coristine did not immediately return an email seeking comment.

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Judge blocks Trump from withholding EV charger funds awarded to 14 states

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Trump officials had ordered states not to spend $5bn given by Biden under national EV infrastructure scheme

A US district judge has blocked the Trump administration from withholding funds previously awarded to 14 states for electric vehicle charger infrastructure.

Seattle-based judge Tana Lin, who was appointed to the bench by Joe Biden in 2021, granted a partial injunction to the states that filed suit against Trump’s Department of Transportation.

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‘Clouded in mystery’: how Ice became a rogue agency that does Trump’s bidding

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Shrouded in secrecy, the US law enforcement agency has become a kind of domestic stormtrooper for Maga’s agenda

Across the US, group chats and community threads have started spiking with warnings. Not just the typical alerts about traffic or out of service subway stations, but where and when an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) raid was last seen. What places to avoid. What the plainclothes agents might look like.

“Hey all,” a Brooklyn, New York, resident wrote in a closed chat with neighbors last week. “A little birdie just told me ICE is out.”

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US supreme court clears way for Trump to deport migrants to countries not their own

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Justices lift judicial order, handing victory to US president in his aggressive pursuit of mass deportations

The US supreme court on Monday paved the way for the Trump administration to resume deporting migrants to countries they are not from, including to conflict-ridden places such as South Sudan.

In a brief, unsigned order, the court’s conservative supermajority paused the ruling by a Boston-based federal judge who said immigrants deserved a “meaningful opportunity” to bring claims that they would face the risk of torture, persecution or even death if removed to certain countries that have agreed to take people deported from the US.

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Canada and EU sign defence pact amid strained US relations and global instability

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Amid Trump’s disrespect of old allies, EU and Canada vow more support for Ukraine and joint work on climate crisis

Canada has signed a wide-ranging defence pact with the EU, as Donald Trump and global instability prompt traditional US allies to deepen their alliances.

Canadian prime minister, Mark Carney, on Monday joined European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, and head of the European Council, António Costa, in Brussels, where they signed a security and defence partnership, pledged more support for Ukraine, as well as joint work on issues from the climate crisis to artificial intelligence.

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Trump decision for US to strike Iran splits Maga supporters – US politics live

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Maga diehards caught between supporting efforts against nuclear proliferation and opposing American involvement in foreign conflicts

JD Vance has said the US is “not at war” with Iran – but is with its nuclear weapons program, holding out a position that the White House hopes to maintain over the coming days as the Iranian regime considers a retributive response to Saturday’s US strike on three of its nuclear installations.

In an interview Sunday with NBC News’ Meet the Press, the US vice-president was asked if the US was now at war with Iran.

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